Tema 10.- Los códigos ortográficos de la lengua inglesa.- Relación sonido-grafía.- Propuestas para la didáctica del código escrito.- Aplicaciones de la ortografía en las producciones escritas.

Human language is the fundamental vehicle to convey our thoughts, needs and feelings. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the communicative process among people by concentrating on its two basic manifestations: oral and written language. With regard to writing in English, this must not be seen merely as transcribed speech, as some of the letters of the English alphabet do not match the sounds of the language. Due to this irregularity, the sound-grapheme relationships need to be worked on in the English-classroom.

Based on this view, the present essay aims to study the English spelling code. For this purpose, I will divide this topic into four main sections. In the first part, we will clarify the concepts of Graphetics and Graphology and then I will explain the main writing systems. In the second part, we will examine the English-spelling system, considering its main spelling rules. Then in the third part, we will analyse the sound-spelling correspondences in English as well as the importance of phonological awareness skills, reading and spelling skills. Finally in the fourth part, we will concentrate on the teaching of the written code, suggesting several activities to do so.

We deal with an essential topic since, according to LOMCE 8/2013, December 9th, the goal of FLT in Primary Education is the acquisition of CC. According to Canale and Swain, one of the competences derived from this is grammatical competence, which refers to the correct use of the linguistic code in both the oral and the written forms.

In addition to that, the FL Curriculum for Primary Education emphasizes the significance of this topic by including in its 2nd block of contents the association of letters to the sounds of the alphabet.

FIRST

In order to develop the first part of this topic, we will define the concepts of Graphetics and Graphology. On the one hand, we understand Graphetics as the study of the physical aspects of the symbols that constitute writing systems and its unit is the symbol. On the other hand, Graphology is the study of the linguistic contrasts that writing systems convey and its unit is the grapheme which can be defined as the smallest contrastive unit in a writing system that might produce a change in meaning. As we may know, the main graphemes of the English language are the 26 units that make up the alphabet. When using these units in writing, we also use punctuation, which has two functions. These are: to enable stretches of language to be read in a coherent way and the use of suprasegmental features which give an indication of the rhythm and tone of speech.

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Apart from this, it is worth mentioning that there are several types of writing systems among which we find on the one hand, there phonological systems, which show a clear relationship between the symbols and sounds of language and on the other hand, the non-phonological systems which do not show a clear relationship between the symbols and the sounds. In this regard, I must point out that both English and Spanish are phonological alphabetic systems, which means that they show a direct correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. However, these languages vary greatly in their regularity and whereas Spanish has a very regular system, English is notorious for its irregularity as it presents a great lack of correspondence between graphemes and phonemes which is reflected in the number of spelling rules that students have to learn.

SECOND

After having considered these general aspects, we will go on to examine the English-spelling code.

In general terms, English spelling is considered to be difficult and unpredictable. However, recent studies show that English is approximately 75% regular. The problem is that the 400 or so irregular spellings are among the most frequently used words, which gives the impression of irregularity. At this point, looking at the history of the language will help us to achieve a better understanding of English spelling.

In the Anglo-Saxon period an alphabet of 24 graphemes had to cope with a sound system of 40 phonemes. Consequently, many sounds had to be signalled by combinations of letters. Later in the Norman period, French scribes introduced new orthographic conventions and then during the printing process many early printers were foreign and used their own spelling rules.

In the 15th century, the Great Vowel Shift, which was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels, was the main reason for the diversity of vowel spellings. Some letters also became silent during this period, such as the <k> of know. Later in the 16th century a new trend appeared: Latin and Greek etymology was reflected in the spelling of words. For example, a <g> was added in reign. Finally in the 17th century a good amount of words were borrowed from French, Spanish and Italian. This caused new patterns of spelling, like <ll> in armadillo. Therefore, English is an amalgam of different traditions.

As mentioned before, as a result of this irregularity and diversity, students need to learn some spelling rules. In what follows, we will highlight the most relevant ones.

Firstly, in English, some words are always written with capital letters such as the days of the week, months and holidays; proper names and place names, nationalities and languages and titles of books, films and magazines.

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Secondly, many English words double their last consonant before endings -ed, -ing, -er and -est. It happens when the consonant is after a vowel and the stress falls on the last syllable as in the word “omitted”.

Thirdly, only nouns have plural and there are several plural formation rules:

- The 1st one is that most nouns add -s to the singular: cat / cats.- The 2nd one is that if the singular ends in -s, -ch, -sh, -ss, -x or -z, the plural ending is –es: bus/buses.- The 3rd one is that if the singular ends in -o, the plural ending is usually –es: tomato/tomatoes.- The 4th one is that if the singular ends in consonant followed by -y, this is replaced by i, so the plural ending is –ies: spy/spies.- The 5th one is that if the singular ends in -f or -fe, the plural ending changes to –ves: wife/wives.- Lastly, other nouns have an irregular plural: child/children, man/men, person / people. However these rules also present some exceptions. Fourthly, adjectives usually change into adverbs by adding -ly: nice / nicely.

THIRD

After having considered the English-spelling code, we will go on to analyse the main sound-spelling correspondences in the English language. For this purpose, we will look at the main correspondences between the sound of vowels and consonants and their spelling. The following rules do not intend to be exhaustive; unfortunately, there are many exceptions.

Regarding vowels, we can distinguish 12 vowel sounds, each of which has several graphic representations:

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Regarding consonants and semiconsonants we can distinguish 24 consonant sounds each of which has several graphic representations:

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Apart from these sound spelling correspondences, we must not forget that there are also some letters in certain words which do not correspond to any

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sound in the word's pronunciation. These are known as silent letters and we may highlight the following:

B (mb, bt) comb, debt, doubt, plumber C in muscle, Connecticut G (gm, gn) foreign, gnaw H in heir, honest, honour, hour, rhythm, vehicle K (kn) knee, know L (lk, lm, ld) chalk, salmon, could N (mn) autumn S in aisle, island, isle T (stle, sten) castle, fasten; also mortgage, postpone W (wr, wh) wrong, who; also answer, sword

After having analysed the main sound-spelling correspondences in the English language, we will concentrate now on the importance of phonological awareness skills, reading and spelling skills and the relationship between them.

On the one hand, phonological awareness refers to the knowledge of the phonological structure of sentences and words and they constitute an essential basis to the acquisition of spelling and reading skills although they do not concern knowledge of letters. It does not develop naturally: like other metalinguistic knowledge most people do not develop it unless they are directly taught.

We can distinguish several levels of phonological awareness skills which develop in a top-down direction: learners begin at the level of the whole word and gradually move to smaller parts of the word like the manipulation of single sounds in it. In this sense, the levels of phonological awareness can be classified into shallower, intermediate and deeper.

On the other hand, reading and spelling skills which are connected to the written word are needed to read and spell successfully. Therefore, we assume that, in order to be good readers and spellers, knowledge of letters is needed in addition to knowledge of the phonological structure. In this sense, spelling and reading skills include aspects like: Understanding of the alphabetic principle, mastering the regular sound-spelling correspondences, mastering spelling rules, memorizing irregular words, decoding, background knowledge and recognizing words as wholes and not as individual letters.

FOURTH

Once phonological, reading and spelling skills have been considered, we will concentrate now on the teaching of the written code in English. According to Matthews, we can distinguish five subskills related to writing, which are graphic skills, that is writing words correctly including aspects such as capitalization, punctuation and spelling; grammatical skills, the ability to use a variety of

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sentence patterns and constructions; stylistic skills, the ability to express precise meaning in a variety of styles and registers; rethorical skills ,the ability to use cohesion devices in order to link parts of a text; and organisational skills, writing ideas with coherence and summarize relevant points.

In the early stages of learning English, students will generally write very little. Since The FL Curriculum for Primary Education stresses oral skills over written skills, the approach to teaching the written code must have two principles: every written item must have been introduced orally before the written form, and writing activities must have a visual support. Apart from these general principles, we must bear in mind that spelling is a productive skill, which requires good visual memory and knowledge of linguistic structure. Thus, to be a good speller, two abilities are required: phonological strategies, which help us to cope with regular spelling patterns and visual strategies, which helps us to cope with the exceptions to regular spelling patterns.

As stated previously, English spelling is illogical and difficult for children to learn. There are four main ways in which children learn the spelling of words. These are: visual style, learners respond to the shapes of words; auditory style, learners recognize the relationship between sounds and letters; kinaesthetic style, learners let the hand remember the kind of movements made when producing words; linguistic style, learners see the relationships between words based on grammar, meaning, etc. Because of that, a multi-sensory approach to the teaching of the written code is the best option.

After having considered the main aspects that we need to take into account when teaching the written code in English, we will now suggest several activities to do so.

As we know, it is very difficult for children to work with abstract concepts like sounds . In order to understand the sound-grapheme relationship, they need first to be familiarised with the alphabet . In this way, they realize that letters, which are something real, are related to the different sounds. In this sense, when selecting writing activities to practise spelling, the next sequence must be followed:

Firstly, we need to work with word-recognition activities. In this stage, the students notice the shape of the words and the number of letters so they can make a mental picture of it. Some activities at this stage include reading and matching a picture with a word, joining up dots to form words and putting the letters of a word in order.

Then, we need to work with activities at word level. In this stage, the teacher will not have to provide the students with the words they need, they will think about the spelling of words by themselves. Some activities that can be carried

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out at this stage are making a list, a personal dictionary, crosswords, matching labels to pictures, anagrams and also games like Bingo, Hangman and Odd Man Out.

After that, we need to work with activities at sentence-level. In this stage, students will write the words they need and also will work with given sentences doing activities like writing speech bubbles for cartoons, sequencing sentences and copying and correcting mistakes.

Lastly, the teacher must provide the students with strategies to check their spelling. In this way, students will be more autonomous in their own learning process, which contributes to the development of two Basic Competences: Learning to Learn and Autonomy and Personal Initiative. These strategies are: using dictionaries (or picture dictionaries in the early stages), making personal dictionaries and classifying words according to the similarities in their spelling.

To finish off this section, it is worth mentioning that when analysing or correcting children´s written work in the activities, it is very important to have a clear approach towards the correction of mistakes: this means that, instead of trying to correct every single mistake, it is wiser to focus on those mistakes that are really important to achieve comprehension of the whole. According to Donn Byrne, we can follow four main correction procedures which are correcting all mistakes, correcting mistakes selectively, indicating mistakes so that students correct them and letting the students to identify and correct their own mistakes.

In any case, we should not be over worried about mistakes since, as Chomsky argued, “they are something natural and necessary and positive evidence that learning is taking place”.

Conclusion

To conclude, we would like to remark that, as proven along this topic, learning to write is a difficult achievement in life. As English teachers, we must bear in mind that in the early stages of learning English, students will generally write very little. Moreover, the youngest ones may be still coping with some features of the writing process in their native language.

Therefore, we must be especially sensitive to the different writing demands which we may find in our classroom and the different strategies of supporting their writing.

In this topic, we have studied the English spelling code. Firstly, we have clarified the concepts of Graphetics and Graphology and I have explained the main writing systems. After that, we have examined the English-spelling code, considering its main spelling rules. Then we have analysed the sound-spelling

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correspondences in English as well as the importance of phonological awareness skills, reading and spelling skills and we have concentrated on the teaching of the written code in English, suggesting several activities to do so.

In order to develop this topic, the following bibliography has been used:

BREWSTER, J. et al. (2003): The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. Penguin English. HARMER, J. (2003): The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman. LARSEN-FREEMAN, D. (2003): Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford University Press. VARELA, R. et al. (2003): All About Teaching English. Centro de Estudios Ramón Areces. DONN BYRNE: “Teaching writing skills” Longman, London 1988.

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